Alexander Crummell, a black cleric, a man of letters, published a monograph in 1889 concerning “The Race-Problem in America.”

He saw “a blatant provincialism” in this country, “whose only solution of the race-problem is the eternal subjection of the Negro and the endless domination of a lawless and self-created aristocracy.”

As the nation vicariously witnessed this week the mayhem that occurred in Baltimore – following the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died in police custody – many no doubt were inclined to conclude that the race problem Crummell lamented 126 years ago remains as much an issue today.

Well, I’m persuaded that race was a factor in Gray’s death, just as I’m persuaded that it was a factor in the deaths of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black youth, at the hands of Ferguson, Mo., police and Eric Garner, a 43-year-old black man, during his fatal encounter with Staten Island police.

But I’m unpersuaded that race was the primary factor in the police-related deaths of the three black men. I think class was more of a factor.

Indeed, in 1978, the black social scientist William Julius Wilson, a self-described social Democrat, authored his most seminal work – “The Declining Significance of Race.” In it, he posited that black folks had so far progressed since the emancipation that race had become less a determinant of their life chances than had economic class.

The prima facie evidence was the differing quality of lives of the black bourgeoisie, to borrow the term used by E. Franklin Frazier, and the black underclass.

The former are well-educated, gainfully employed, high-earning and propertied.

The latter are at the very bottom of the economic hierarchy, Wilson explained. Their ranks not only include “lower-class workers whose incomes fall below the poverty level but also more or less permanent welfare recipients, the long-term unemployed and those who have dropped out of the labor market.”

Gray, whose criminal rap sheet included burglary, second-degree assault, possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to manufacture and distribute, was a product of the underclass.

As was Brown, who was captured on security-camera footage stealing a box of cigars and assaulting a convenience store attendant minutes before his death, and Garner, whose criminal record included more than 30 arrests dating back to 1980.

That’s not to say the deaths of Gray, Brown and Garner were justified. It’s to say that their deaths are not so much a race problem – as the conventional wisdom has it – as a class problem.

Indeed, blacks accounted for 31 percent of U.S. criminal arrests in 2013, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. And the vast majority of those black arrestees were members of the underclass.

When blacks who are not poor, not undereducated, not jobless and not ex-offenders start to have run-ins with the law resulting in their deaths, then we can say we have a race (rather than class) problem in this country.

But isn’t that elitist? Doesn’t that suggest that we should be less concerned if a member of the black underclass dies in the hand of police than a member of the black bourgeoisie? Don’t all #blacklivesmatter?

Well, yes, all black lives matter.

That’s why those of us who want to see fewer blacks die in encounters with the police (not to mention fewer black criminal offenders and fewer black prison inmates) advocate policies that address the class aspect of criminal justice in America.

That means public schools that are held accountable for the miseducation of urban underclass children. It means a welfare system that rewards, rather than disincentivizes, two-parent families. And it means a robust economy creating so many jobs that the underclass finds its labor in demand.

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